Continuing with our “Best of The Web 2009 Series”, we are proud to provide you with a post originally written by Michael Martinez at best-seo-blog.com that discusses differences and similarities between seo tactics and strategy.
Many people today implement SEO tactics without thinking through their strategies. Here is a quick guide to help you set a strategy and match good tactics for it.
The SEO strategy defines your objectives and the tactics you’ll use to achieve them. In other words, you use an SEO strategy to state your goals and how you will work toward accomplishing those goals.
Example of an SEO Strategy: Our Web site will leverage its content to gain 1st active keyword matrix relevant to the topic of “strange banana glues that glow in the dark”.
Some Example SEO Strategies:
- Brand launch campaign
- Rebranding campaign
- Invasive Campaign
- Competitive Displacement Campaign
- Query Building Campaign
Brand Launching SEO Strategies are the most complex because you have to create value in the new brand, build active queries around it, and position content to prevent other people from seizing your glory. If you’re doing the SEO separately from the marketing, chances are good there will be mis-steps along the way. Your strategy should encompass a recovery and adjustment phase.
Rebranding SEO Strategies may be tediously detailed but they are not nearly as complex as branding SEO strategies because when you relaunch a brand you can (and should) use the old brand to create a transition for your clients and prospects (or suspects) to the new brand space. Again, if you’re doing the SEO separately from the marketing, the chances for miscues rise significantly so you should allow for recovery and adjustment.
Invasive SEO Strategies are the most competitive and aggressive strategies. You’re moving a new site into an established space. It doesn’t have to be highly competitive — your showing up may be sufficient to trigger an SEO war. SEO wars wear you down because you have to stay on top of so much detail. These are high-stress campaigns and you should design your strategies around cycles.
Competitive Displacement Campaign SEO Strategies may sound ugly but these are very common. eCommerce sites implement them all the time when they roll out new products and drop old products. Many affiliate sites also implement competitive displacement campaign strategies. People probably describe the process by a hundred names and expressions. The goal is to position new content in the search results without losing significant traffic while removing old content from your site. Many SEO technicians are brought in after the change in content has occurred, when people start to realize it’s not as simple as taking down old pages and putting up new pages.
Query Building SEO Strategies dovetail nicely with other strategies but you can implement these strategies without doing anything else. Think of a site or document that is relevant to two expressions. Your initial keyword research suggests one query is far more active than another. You try an invasive strategy and it fails. So what do you do? You can try building interest in the less active query, where your chances of dominating will be better.
Some Example SEO Tactics:
- Targeted copywriting (articles, press releases, blog posts, etc.)
- SERP listing modifications
- Supporting content placement
- Strategic Link Placement
- Supporting Link Placement
The Targeted Copywriting SEO Tactic is simple. You write an article and place it on a site. The article should contain one or more links. People most often use blogs, article directories, and press release services for this type of tactic. A powerful strategy would utilize a variety of targeted copy formats on many sites.
SERP Listing Modifications SEO Tactic should be self-evident. You change page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs.
Supporting Content Placement SEO Tactics differ from Targeted Copywriting SEO Tactics because supporting content is not intended to rank well in the dominant query. Let’s say you are promoting a site that sells dog supplies. Your supporting content might consist of blog posts about dogs on a site that advertises your dog supplies site (through banners, embedded image ads, videos, text links, etc.). The content has to have value. It has to serve a purpose other than being there simply for a link.
Strategic Link Placement SEO Tactics are very common. You cherry pick the Web sites where you place your links and optimize the anchor text. Some people optimize the surrounding text, too. Strategic Link Placement SEO Tactics may include creating microsites but I would regard that to be a drastic effort.
Supporting Link Placement SEO Tactics include creating spammy linking resource sites, swapping links, submitting links to directories, buying links, dropping links in blog comments and forum signatures, etc. Not all supporting link placement SEO tactics are naughty. They’re just low-key, minimal effort, low-value ROI methods. On any average day, no matter how sick you feel, you should be able to get at least 10 of these kinds of links without having to get dressed for work (well, if you’re an experienced SEO, that is).
Matching SEO Strategies With SEO Tactics
Frankly, you could use all these tactics with all these strategies. It really comes down to time and resources. You should choose the best possible set of tactics to achieve the highest reasonable return on your investment. That does not necessarily mean do everything possible until you get a Web site to rank first for keyword X.
A good strategy will pull up short of the mark if it’s not the most efficient means of achieving the ultimate objective (which, technically, should be to increase converting search referrals regardless of keywords and rankings). You can use a launcher strategy and an adjustment strategy, followed up by a maintenance strategy.
Sometimes you have to throw a Hail Mary SEO Strategy into play. This is the strategy you pull out of your back pocket when the reasonable, low-cost, high return-on-investment strategies don’t achieve what you need to achieve. Hail Mary strategies are almost tactics. A Hail Mary Strategy has to be structured around risks as well as payoffs (which is why it’s not a tactic).
An example of a Hail Mary Strategy might be where you pull down an entire site and replace every page with new content that is meant to rank for an entirely different set of keywords, a sort of “B” matrix of related keywords. Hail Mary strategies are radical and risky. You don’t want to build a business on this kind of work because the payoff is not usually high enough to justify the effort.
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